Response to the following discussions(X4) with approximately 150 words or more each. Include a reference to each response. Be thoughtful and insightful and it must demonstrate critical thinking and analysis.
1. I would probably utilize multiple research methods to obtain the information I needed to evaluate the effectiveness of my new educational campaign. The first method I would use is by administering surveys to the effected population. Pre and post knowledge assessments can help gauge your audience's baseline knowledge of emergency management and then whether or not their knowledge increased, decreased, or remained the same after my educational campaign.
Demographic information would also be needed, along with information on their highest level of education or any background on emergency preparedness. One of the most difficult things about surveys is getting your population to participate in them in the first place.
Various marketing tools can be used to help with this . . . something as simple as throwing an ice cream social or burger burn can help entice people to show up and participate. If the surveys were simply mailed to the people, most of your population would simply throw the survey away without a second thought. These are just a few of my ideas.
2. If I was in charge of this type of program, I would start by targeting local news, print and social media sources to promote awareness of emergency preparedness and after a week or two send out questionnaires or groups of people to poll information on how the local people feel or responded to the information, also if possible doing a cursory collection of sales data from local stores would give me an idea if people are stocking up on valuable emergency items.
I would collect and examine the data that shows the biggest fear of what type of natural disaster the public is worried about and what kinds of resources would be in higher demand in that area and make sure that the local community organizations are well equipped.
"Experience has shown that emergency managers can learn much from disaster research through personal contact with them. Many emergency managers have established important long-term ties with disaster researchers at local universities or those in the immediate region for the purpose of gaining knowledge useful for their decision making" (Phillips, Neal, & Webb, p. 64, 2012).
Reaching out to local professionals at universities, colleges and others in this field would also give great input into the types of disasters that are common in that area and the challenges of pre and post disaster that they face, what better way to know the hard points then gathering information from those who are there first hand.
3. The general purpose of the disaster scales is to help us understand how a disaster can be measured and in doing so create procedures that can help us prepare for them and helps us recover from the same. Wind speeds, tornado speeds, earthquakes, social and physical impacts, these are all measured using scales. With the increasing number of tornadoes and earthquakes, specially abroad, these scales have become invaluable for researchers and emergency planners.
Research does suggest that there is incising trend of disasters, however, not the most popular ones. While we might see all the major and/ or devastating disasters in the news like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Tsunamis, Nuclear power plant meltdown, etc. research shows that flooding is playing a major role when it comes to more human loss and infrastructure damage. In fact, one of the assessments that was done in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was the flooding caused more damage than the actual storm and winds.
4. The topics discussed in Chapter 4 consist of various disasters that occur throughout the world and scales used to measure them. Scientists developed measures for specific natural hazards to estimate how dangerous and damaging a disaster will be. The Richter Scale measures how strong an earthquake will be, based on seismograph measures. Charles Ricther developed the scale in order to capture the intensity of the earth's shaking and the power released (Phillips, Neal, & Webb, 2012). T.
Theodore Fukita invented the F-scale in order to determine the wind intensity, wind speed and damage caused by tornados. The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale was created by Bob Simpson and Herb Saffir with the intent on measuring sustained wind speed, in order to determine the power of a hurricane.
The numbers and types of disasters continue to rise (Phillips, Neal, & Webb, 2012). The textbook states that as the modern world becomes more industrialized, humans and structures are susceptible to technological hazards. Additionally, people living in hazardous areas, along with industrialization adds fuel to the fire. IN 2011, Japan suffered a chain reaction of disasters that supports the initial statement. Japan was struck with a M 9.0 earthquake.
Second order effects were a devastating; a massive tsunami wave of water impacted the northern coast. Third order effects included radiation leaks and explosions from damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. These cascading effects are likely as the world continues to industrialize and demographics settle in hazardous areas.